Blog

Jimmy Flynn is the kind of person who shows up with his hands, his heart, and his whole self. As a Library Production Associate at Freedom Reads, Jimmy works in the shop each day transforming raw wood slabs into the finished Freedom Libraries that bring powerful books to incarcerated readers. It's skilled, meaningful work, and what fuels him most is the moment those libraries are received. "Seeing the smiles of those on the inside, the joy and excitement they express from being gifted with libraries," he says, is what he enjoys most.

For years, I let the mistake on Wikipedia remain, the one that says my birthday is February 1st. I’ve grown obsessed with dates and remember reading The Big Sea and the Arnold Rampersand biography of Langston Hughes. Remember the ways that Black history month was both how I connected with history and how I connected myself to history. And I enjoyed the moments I shared with Hughes. Maybe I’ve just wanted to be like my mother, who wrote the first poem I ever read. Her birthday is on February 18th, which is the same day as Toni Morrison’s birthday. And when I learned Toni Morrison’s birthday, while in prison, one of the things that I thought deeply about was the ways in which it is easy to forget that Black history is what happens in your home. And that this, too, is American history.

At Freedom Reads, Nicky keeps everything running smoothly behind the scenes. As our Administrative Assistant, she supports the entire staff with their administrative needs, ensures the kitchen is fully stocked, and maintains clean facilities. She also assists the Library Production Team and Chief Production Officer with all their administrative duties. Freedom Library openings take us all over the country, and Nicky is the one who makes sure we get there.

I can only shake my head and wonder how I got through all the crazy things I did in one piece. Alive. When I was 15, my mom stayed on pins and needles every time I left the house. Even when I went to school she worried. Guess I had more energy than focus in those days. Guess, also, it was just a matter of time when I’d find myself in hot water up to my neck. But before winding up in prison for a robbery that netted me a 20-year sentence, I did something that nearly got me killed at age 17.

You probably know that some books don’t politely knock. They show up, sit down, and make themselves very comfortable – sometimes at a level that makes us really uncomfortable. But that discomfort is necessary. These books might unsettle you. They might haunt you. They might leave you feeling some type of way - and then leave you feeling that way for a while.

I’ve always struggled with the beginnings of things, for me it makes the most sense to meander my way into things. In a way, I meandered my way into prison. I took the crash course: petty crime to carjacking before the midterms of my junior year. I get locked up in December and I might as well have gotten locked up in January. End of the year, beginning of the year – you get to imagine where you’ve been and what you’ve become.

What keeps Freedom Reads thriving is the people who believe in the mission and choose to support it. LeRoy General, our Chief Development Officer, is the person who helps connect would-be supporters to our goal of opening a Freedom Library in every cellblock in every prison in the United States.

In her outstanding new book The Other Side of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans, cognitive scientist and podcaster, Maya Shankar takes a refreshing look at how the typically unsettling process of change can be seen as an opportunity. Change can be frightening and disorienting, but it can also be transformative. Drawing on stories of people who underwent life-altering personal change, including Freedom Reads founder and CEO, Dwayne Betts, the book focuses the reader’s attention on what is possible following reality-changing events. Here is a short excerpt from the chapter entitled “Possible Selves.”

I went to prison when I was 17 years old. 19 years later, I went before the parole board. During my parole hearing, I could not stop looking at my victim's mother. I had an image of her imprinted in my mind from my arraignment and my sentencing. Though she was a little older, the pain that was imprinted on my mind, the emotions that were on her face almost two decades ago, were still fresh. I could hear her saying, “Y’all promised me 30 years.” That is all that the court gave her, a promise that I would be in prison for 30 years. I had been in prison for approximately 20 years, since I was 17, and now, I was granted parole.

Having grown up in Nigeria, I came to study in America with little to no understanding of the Black experience beyond what I had absorbed from television and popular culture. Those images were partial, flattened, and removed from the textures of daily life. It wasn’t until I encountered Richard Wright’s Black Boy that I began to see a deeper, more unsettling truth about America and the struggles of Black life—a truth that resonates strongly for those experiencing confinement.

Dolphins. They were everywhere. Springing and spraying in and out of an undulating tangerine sea set ablaze by a fiery-gold sun. An oceanic dreamscape with splashing dolphins and soaring seabirds doing what they do while the summer sun burns and drips smooth as honey. Such a scene is what a visual artist painted after she visited a prisoner on death row in California and asked him what he thought about from one grey day to the next. He mentioned thinking about a number of things while behind bars. Thinks he should never have committed his crime. Any crime. No time. Though he mostly thought about dolphins and seabirds soaring and splashing in and over the deep blue sea. Perhaps the image represented freedom in its truest form to the prisoner. Freedom in its most elemental state. Freedom in the abstract. Freedom without contract. Freedom that does not detract nor subtract but is pure and simple and intact. Just freedom.

Lori reflects on “Doggerel in the Stacks,” a recent Brooklyn Public Library event with Freedom Reads Founder & CEO Dwayne Betts and dog cognition expert Alexandra Horowitz. In the blog, Lori explores the surprising links between prisons, poetry, and life with dogs — and what they can teach us about how we see the world.